There are a lot of products available which provide some level of synchronous audio, video, or collaboration and it can be a lot of work going through the process of assessing each one, for features and for integration with Moodle.
The Moodle community website has a forum dedicated to discussions about the various web conferencing plugins, so this is a good place to look for information about what is available and useful.
The community forum is at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=7797.
The Moodle community website also has a plugin database of add-ons which is open to download by everyone. If you search through this with a variety of keywords such as conference, meeting, and so on, you will find a range of applications. Some of these are up-to-date and some others have not been updated in over a year. Some of the better known ones are:
The plugin database is found on the Moodle community website at http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6009.
To help provide some extra and open context for this chapter, I ran a short survey on www.surveymonkey.com in mid-2010, asking people three questions:
- Which web conferencing software have you used before?
- Which of the following aspects of integration with LMS (Learning Management System) are important?
- Please rate the following features of web conferencing software with respect to training and education?
Each question provided the user with a selection of options, and an option to add more information.
This survey was run through my PLN (Personal Learning Network) on Twitter, and in a short time I got just over 50 responses from the network of mainly professionals within the training and development arena. The results go some way to answering some of the initial questions that people raise about web conferencing.
If you want to check out the survey it can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BQSKXVR.
Users were able to select multiple products that they have used. Over 28 different products were mentioned and as expected, the top three mentioned products were WebEx (70%), Adobe Connect (64%), and Elluminate (50%). The top open source product to get voted was DimDim although BigBlueButton did get a mention. However, DimDim has recently been purchased by Salesforce, and so is no longer an option.
When considering integration with the LMS, the most sought after option was single sign on (81%), where the participant did not have to log into the web conferencing system in addition to having logged into the LMS. The second most important integration option was having the entry to appear in the course calendar (61%). One thing that was clear from the results was that it needed to be simple for the participants to see and access the web conferencing system from the LMS.
With as many applications as you can expect, there are a wide range of features. For the survey, I had included 13 options, and the results were really interesting. The respondents were asked to rate the feature as Extremely Important, Important, Doesn't Matter Much, Deal Break or N/A. Four features were deemed Extremely Important by 50% or more of the responders. They were:
- Synchronous Audio
- Text Chat
- Desktop Sharing
- Recording for Replay
When considering Important as the option, the following four features topped the selections:
- Single Video Feed
- Collaborative Document Creation
- Publication as Video
- Scheduling of Events
Having experienced the most popular tools as presenter and participant, I think these two groups of features are certainly a good representation of what is generally deemed essential.
One point that came across in survey and comments is that quality audio is the key with 95% of people feeling it is important or extremely important. I have been on web conference systems where the audio didn't work well, was cumbersome to configure and manage, or just didn't do what was expected, and it is frustrating as a participant and as a trainer.
So before you start choosing a product, you will need to have considered what level of integration you need with Moodle and which features you deem are "must have" to provide the synchronous environment for your participants.
Note
Using Moodle to connect with synchronous web conferencing systems
Working from home and increasingly distributed workforces have increased the costs in time and money for arranging face-to-face training. Adding synchronous video and web conferencing to Moodle helps provide a deeper real time communication than just chat. In this chapter, we look at web conferencing features and the Moodle integration modules for three well-known systems used today.
We won't be dealing with cost of the respective systems, which is without doubt an important factor. However, there is another aspect to consider, and that is technology.